Ataman Matvei Platov

Ataman Matvei Ivanovich Platov (6 August 1751-3 January 1818) was a general of the Russian Empire who fought in the Napoleonic Wars.

Biography
Matvei Ivanovich Platov was born in Pribilyanskove in 1751 and fought under the Don Cossacks against the Crimean Khanate. In 1772 he joined a cossack regiment of the Russian Army and fought under Alexander Suvorov in his 1782 campaign against Chechnya-Dagestan. In 1800, when Great Britain's occupation of Malta made Russia ally with France in the French Revolutionary Wars, he was sent to take part in the Indian March of Paul against British interests in British Raj but the march was cancelled when it reached Orenburg.

During the Napoleonic Wars he fought in the Polish Campaign of 1806-1807 and was made the commander of the Army of Greece during the Russo-Turkish War of 1807. He received the Order of St. Vladimir during his fighting in the Danube from 1808 to 1809 and he founded a Cossack administration in Novocherkassk. In 1812, Platov fought against France during the Patriotic War and later pushed into Germany with Tsar Alexander I of Russia himself. He was made Count of the Russian Empire for his defeat of French forces while they retreated, and when he accompanied the Tsar to London he was awarded a golden sword and honorary degree by Oxford University. He died in Novocherkassk in 1818.